WYSIWYG- Harmful, or Helpful?

The primary value of WYSIWYG is that it reduces the amount of "reading between the lines" you have to do when looking at an enemy's base or units. You don't have to squint to see the telltale shimmer of cloaked units or the disturbed dirt of buried traps, and that's great because you don't have the bloody time.

well you know... that's some bullshit because those simple facts allowed the game to be very balanced and also were fun to have. I agree with the economy, it's better off now.

Agreee. Like any design policy, it is only as good as the measure with which it is applied. And all things must be in measure - or balance if you prefer. Too many of these mantras on the forums have become religious monikers with little thought to the nuance behind them. Edge case fixes are a key component of any design and screeching "WYSIWYG" at every one just hampers design. It's a design principle not a religious pillar.

I'd agree if TA had been well balanced, heh.

Though those attributes would give a lot more options for balancing.

they would. and in FAF we used them to prevent griefing by fellow teammates. (EG com explosions did little to no damage to allies whereas damage was still applied to opponents.)


it's just the way it is. In cases like these WYSIWYG is just a sad sorry tag along that you wanna get the hell rid of.

I think PA actually has an armor system. So i.e. damage from air units damages structures with a damage factor of 0 to prevent the issues with fighters killing air factories we had a year ago.
But that system is only used for these extreme edge cases so far I think.

Yeah, armour so no damage against buildings and ubercannon does less against comms and buildings. I hope they change the uber cannon back as balance has changed, but I understand how edge case the air spam exploit had been back then.

Err. NONE of these are related to WYSIWYG. They were simply design choices made. You also have several of these flipped (eg B -> A, not A -> B).

WYSIWYG can be entirely summed up as: Things that look identical act identical. That's it.

Whoever advocated that didn't understand WYSIWYG.

Why not? TA could easily be played across multiple battlefields, while keeping it's WYSIWYG elements.

Such as? If you're referring to the UI in any way, then you aren't talking about WYSIWYG.

This is one of the most annoying things in Supcom FA, please don't try and bring it into PA, it's unnecessarily complex...

If you ever think about balancing t2 and t1 you quickly realize that it isn't unnecessarily complex, but actually makes balancing the whole economy SO MUCH EASIER.

it might make balancing easier, but it makes understanding the economy at a glance muuuuch harder. Which is why I can't stand the Supcom FA system, because my economy will crash for no reason and it punishes you a LOT more for it...

It's actually easier to balance out your economy in FA because you can control your energy usage based on how much metal you have.

That might be the case, but you have to know what you're doing. And that is not an area in which I have much expertise. It's also still more complex and kind of counter-intuitive. Why would something spend more or less power to build one thing than another thing? Doesn't make much sense to me. The PA economy is nice and simple, and I like it just the way it is.

That was actually a large part of the problem - you'd be metal limited, and would be positive energy, but then you'd start reclaiming something and your energy would tank because you were no longer metal limited. The other problem was that every unit cost a different amount of enorgy, making planned usage very hard to manage.

And that is a problem?

Good players made that "problem" the key to controlling your economy very well.

And this is why I'm not good at Supcom FA.

Yes. It means I can't just figure the economy system out without either playing like 10-20 games minimum or wikiing/asking about it. Whereas in PA I figured the economy out after 2 games, no problem.

Why are you not #0 right in front of elodea?
I would say of myself I still have not figured out the economy of PA. It just doesn't work to me.

Well the economy isn't the only part of the game. :l

It's the foundation of everything. If your management of the economy is perfect you will win vs 99% of all players by sheer numbers.